Linh’s legs wobbled, as if a wind had pushed them apart, trying to rip her away from the ground. Sometimes, Linh feared she really would blow away. One bad storm, one unlucky trip to the market, and she would be gone. Torn apart. Blown into the bogs and muddied rivers.

The innkeeper chuckled, more red feathers with little teeth attached to them poking out of his tunic and sleeves. He looked like a body barely able to contain hellfire. “Yeh, didn’t think ya’d want that job. Lemme see… there’s always delivering letters, but one rainy day and…”

Death. In every single job, she could crumple, be torn, or die a soggy death. Linh shook her head wildly, but the innkeeper didn’t notice. Immediately, she waved her hands in front of him, huge blotting words forming.

[Mr. Crow. I would like to learn more about the witch’s job. Please give me the posting.]

The innkeeper’s mouth fell open. She could see a mound of rotting and feathered red teeth forming on his tongue. He spat them out quickly, the teeth plopping down like a marching band of reapers. “Yeh can’t be serious! She’s a witch! They’ve cursed you! They’ve cursed all of us!”

Linh merely held out her hand. A dark and clear please wrote itself down the center of her palm.

The innkeeper looked at her, and Linh wondered what expression he saw drawn clumsily there in ink. Sadness? Another empty face, completely white and void of ink?

“Fine,” he handed her a worn scroll of parchment. “The goddess bless ye, girl. I know desperation when I see it.”

Linh bowed her down and took the scroll. An Easterner gesture, like her mother taught her. Bad habits are hard to break. But the innkeeper, the Crow, merely bowed back.

::

As Linh made her way back through the streets, she tried to hide her trembling. People were bustling to and fro, shifting the air around her. It was easy to pretend that it was only the air shaking her, instead of the thought of witches.

Magic was the very lifeforce, the very breath of the planet. Unlike Eastern practitioners like Linh’s late mother or Western clerics, witches disrupted the flow of energy and magic in the air. They ripped it out of the naturel order and used it wreck mayhem. Most curses were caused by angry witches. Linh once heard of a prince turned into a beast for refusing a witch’s courtship gift. Witches were petty, selfish, and dangerous creatures.

But witches could also remove a curse, given the right price. Usually, the consequences of that price would be too much to live with. Some unmentionables would be cured, only to fall back into their curse within a month. Some gained back the use of their arms, only for their legs to start dancing forever.

Witches lived to create suffering.

::

“Oh thank the goddess, you’re safe!” Marie leapt up from the barstool, throwing her arms around her. If Linh had lungs in this body, she was sure they would be broken now. “I thought you got splashed by mud from some clumsy noble’s carriage or even… What’s that there?”

Silently, Linh handed Marie the scroll. Marie skimmed the top of the page before her face went as pale as Linh’s and she dropped the scroll.

“No,” she stuffed it into her apron, “absolutely not! You’re not going!”

[Witches surely have spells to prevent me from being injured from splashes.]

“A witch cursed you!”

Red ink exploded across Linh’s face as she stepped closer.

[No. A practitioner did.]

Neither of the them spoke for several breaths.

“What that boy did—it was unforgivable! He’s not a proper practitioner, not like your mother was. If it weren’t for the High council, we could have him declared a witch, simple as that, he’s not—”

Linh place her thin paper fingers on Marie’s arm. [Please don’t.]

“Girl—”

[Aunt Marie. Do you know what I think when I see my reflection in the mirror?]

Marie didn’t answer.

[I think that several children must have tried to make this body, throwing paper balls and paper rolls wherever they pleased, and then gluing on flat pages for my clothes and face. They didn’t care how I looked, as long as I stood in the shape of a girl. I’m a child’s walking nightmare.]

“No,” Marie lied beautifully, cradling Linh close. “I still see your mother’s beautiful daughter. Those bright brown eyes, silky black hair…”

[Then let me try to be ‘her’ again. Let me go work for Hecate.]

Marie glowered. “And if her cure makes you worse?”

[I’m not going to ask her for a cure.] That would invite disaster.

[I’m going to learn from her.]